Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise
Twenty hours of snow to bury the car. Two hours with a shovel to dig it out. Two minutes to get bogged down two blocks from home.
I was so sure my skills and experience would get me through. Turns out, it was more like two guys with a shovel and a hearty push. I didn’t slow down until the car was back in the nice, freshly shoveled driveway.
Perhaps the bookstore won’t be open Thursday, either. On the other hand, this is Oklahoma, where on occasion the temperature goes up after dark.
I am at the kitchen table, trying to ignore the blinding glare from the back yard. Oklahoma is said to be a ‘blue’ state, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much white. The book store is closed, as are the roads through this neighborhood.
Should’a: (1) Bought some items when I filled up at QuikTrip. (2) Battled the crowds at the grocery store Monday evening, since I’d love to be cooking something right now. (3) Gone to bed Monday night, instead of venturing out regularly to clear the car for Tuesday’s morning drive. (4) Taken some photos of books to list for sale on the internet. (5) Brought along the gloves I left on the front counter.
Glad that I: (1) Filled up at QuikTrip. (2) Didn’t venture out Tuesday morning, since I likely would have been mired in a snowdrift. (3) Don’t work for a corporation any longer, that would have required me to be on the job and driving to get there.
Granted, I have selective memory – but I don’t remember being stuck inside a house before. No doubt, all the years in broadcasting required that I be on the job, forcing the snow-shoveling and slippery driving. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so trapped if I had a compelling reason to dig out.
Meanwhile, I’ll enjoy the fact that Oklahoma has four seasons – even if none of them last particularly long!
Everyone who has come in the shop today has commented on tomorrow’s weather. We called that “Top of Mind” back when I was in radio, a phrase to indicate the populist thinking of the moment, that thing that should be the primary focus of our programming.
The Tulsa World buried the weather story in this morning’s edition. Page 10. Even there, the headline doesn’t read “Winter Storm Due,” or “Snowy Weather Ahead.” They pin it directly on the originators of the forecast: “Forecasters Warn of Snow.” You see, the SNOW isn’t the news in the opinion of the World, only that some have issued a warning.
It is another example of the disrespect the local newspaper has for the electronic media in general. The sports page is the most obvious daily reminder of the bias. The local sportswriters seem to search for opportunities to take stabs at announcers and their employers, although the most vicious of the attacks are done anonymously (The Picker).
Not every newspaper takes such a position. Some have regular media columns that treat the broadcast medium as entertainment, (rightly or not) to be reviewed – thumbs up or thumbs down – like a movie. Others offer schedules of events to be broadcast, of a local nature. If the Tulsa World touches on such coverage, it is so infrequent as to be invisible.
The argument that they are reporting only the news, and not prognostications, will not hold water. In the arenas of politics and the economy, stories are published all too often that report trends, surveys, and other gossip – as a prediction of an outcome. It’s simply political weather forecasting, and pans out just as often as not.
What is it that is crippling the newspapers of the United States? Why are they increasingly cutting staff, reducing local content, and – in the most dramatic cases – going out of business completely?
My own guess (they never call and ask my opinion…) is that the old school journalistic paradigm of telling people “what they need to know,” is no longer valid. It is a business model synonymous with classroom teaching. In an age of diverse educational and entertainment opportunities, some prefer a delicatessen approach to information. We can select the items most palatable to our tastes and pass on the rest.
In the Tulsa World deli, cheeseburgers and fries are at the back of the store, hidden behind the brussels sprouts and broccoli. Even though the burgers and fries outsell the vegetables, we’re expected to first chew through what is good for us to get at the stuff on everyone’s mind.
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